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rising fast
GuiaMarieDelPradoandDaveMosher
Aug28,2015,3:55PM
Melting glaciers and ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica are responsible for at least two thirds
of sea level rise. The missing piece of the puzzle is a bizarre phenomenon called thermal expansion,
which is when heat causes water's volume to expand.
Water is weird. It’s one of the only liquids that expands as it freezes, at 0 degrees Celsius, yet
contracts as you warm it up to 4 C. (This is why water ice floats while most other types of ice sink.)
But if you warm up water beyond 4 C, the molecules violently push on one another, expanding the
total volume of liquid and making it take up more space.
Earth’s surface has warmed by about 0.8 degrees C on average since 1880, soon after the industrial
revolution kicked off.
And our world is undergoing some extensive warming, especially in the northern pole:
The world is warming, and it's increasing the volume of ocean water. NASA Earth ObservatoryThe Earth’s
oceans are especially at risk — they have responded to this increase by soaking up more and more heat as
global temperatures climb:
Again, this doesn’t sound like much. But any increase gives storm surges that much of a leg up to
overwhelm coastal marshes, topple levees, and cause damage deeper and deeper inland.
This is a simplistic illustration of what that looks like for coastal cities, but it's a dangerous
scenario:
Union of Concerned Scientists
What’s more, the rate of sea level rise is only accelerating as oceans soak up more heat, expand,
and icebergs and glaciers continue to melt.
Earth is maddeningly dynamic — especially the oceans. That’s partly why it takes so long to reveal
these trends in the first place; you have to take measurements over long periods of time to see the
trends.
To that end, researchers are still uncertain about the interplay of surface water and deep-ocean
warming. But it’s a given that if the planet keeps warming, as it’s on track to, and oceans continue
to soak up heat, vulnerable coastal cities like New Orleans are in a heap of trouble.